Naked in the River

By Arianna V. Khamsaly

My name is Arianna. I like tofu, short walks on the beach and being the first to laugh at my own jokes. Hell, sometimes the only one to laugh. 

My life lies somewhere between debilitating grief and immaculate joy. Always striving for the joy end of the spectrum, often failing to reach it. 

I am a secretary by day

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackberry Moonshine Press
• Release date: Apr 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798218187132

Arianna V. Khamsaly

Arianna Vivian Khamsaly is an American Singer-Songwriter, Nashville Recording Artist, and Author. Also a Head-in-the-Clouds-Dreamer, Devoted Mother, Lucky Wife, and Unapologetic Feminist. A strong Believer in Human Rights and Racial Justice, she was born in a log cabin on the outskirts of a tiny town in far Northern California. Raised skinny dipping in the rivers, running barefoot on her childhood property, and learning to think outside the box, she was home-schooled most of her upbringing, and had to get creative in ways to entertain herself. She turned to writing, singing, songwriting, and visual arts as a means of self expression and as an escape from often crushing loneliness in the midst of life in such a remote location. Music and art run in her family. Her father is a renowned music teacher, singer and musician, her brother is a professional fiddle player who spent twenty years playing for stars out of Nashville, and her mother is a UC Berkeley Art Major. Arianna resides with her husband, Lefty, and their kids in Redding, California, while traveling to Nashville periodically to enjoy being immersed in the soul of Music City. Her most recent music release is an EP called "Anywhere But Here." It consists of four original tracks that speak of love, loss, individuality and the confines of conventionality in America today.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

My name is Arianna. I like tofu, short walks on the beach and being the first to laugh at my own jokes. Hell, sometimes the only one to laugh.

My life lies somewhere between debilitating grief and immaculate joy. Always striving for the joy end of the spectrum, often failing to reach it.

I am a secretary by day and a singer-songwriter by night. I prefer my night job. It’s the only one that feeds my soul.

Sometimes at my desk during work hours this overwhelming emotion washes over me. A type of desperation that I can’t accurately describe; this feeling that hurts. Painful deep sharpness inside my chest. No, not heart attack symptoms. My heart is fine. Physically fine, anyway.

But hearts are funny things. The only way I know how to exist is by following mine, yet it hasn’t always led me in the right direction.

Even the misadventures have been interesting, though. Let me tell you all about it. The good and the bad. And everything between the lines.

I’m glad you’re here.

Chapter 1

BULLSHIT

S ounds like bullshit to me.

Tears stung my face and I felt like I was having an out of body experience as I heard the words spill from his mouth. His voice sounded distant, biting and aggressive simultaneously. I’d been crying all day as I worked on a note explaining why I could not stay married to him. I poured my heart out on that piece of paper. Told him how sorry I was multiple times. Even lied and said it wasn’t his fault.

He met my words with, Sounds like bullshit to me.

Looking back, I guess I’m glad that was how my ex-husband chose to deal with me divorcing him. I’ve always thought that if he loved me like he said he did, he would have asked me to stay. He would have said or done anything to try to make me believe he could change. All that would have done is draw out one of the worst moments of both of our lives. I’m glad he met my soulful apology and goodbye note with nothing but a smart-ass remark. It made it easier.

As time went on, our girls told me how sad he was that I left him. They indicated that he was crushed and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. This was odd, because he hadn’t seemed even remotely in love with me anymore. But then again, he always expressed his emotions, or lack thereof, in unusual ways. If I brought up a tough conversation, he would crack a joke. I would beg him to stop drinking too much, he tuned me out. He found stupid reasons to get mad so he could leave me alone all night in strange hotel rooms on road trips. I only realized years afterwards that he was probably out sleeping with other women or doing drugs while I waited, scared and alone, wondering if he was ever coming back. His default behaviors and deflections became tiresome. This was never a marriage based on equality or fairness. It was based on the fact that I unexpectedly got pregnant at nineteen years old and his well meaning family insisted that the entire world would explode if we did not legally wed before the baby was born. So I found myself standing in the local courthouse with a blue velvet dress covering my three months pregnant belly. Saying I do to a man who gave me a second child two and a half years after the first, and a whole lot of memories. Some I wish I could forget.

Don’t get me wrong, I did love him. I am not writing this to claim he had no good qualities. He was brilliant. Always at the top of his class. I admired that about him. He had an intensity that drew me in. To this day I wish him well. I give him credit for always letting our daughters know how much he loves them. He put them through a lot of things that would break most parent/child bonds, but our girls still love him and feel his love. I commend him for that.

When we were first together I loved him fiercely, but I was blind to all the red flags. I thought they were just pretty house decorations. Useful for wiping down counter tops. I thought his huge pot consumption was a phase. I assumed it was normal to throw up and morph into a different person every time he drank. He was cold and frequently arrogant. The young heart can forgive so much. But only for so long...

During our marriage Jason often behaved as if he were the only one in it. He made major decisions without running a single detail by me. It was as if it was his life and his alone, and I was a minor aspect in it. Meant to be swept off to the side most of the time, except when he wanted something from me. He would take one of our daughters to get her ears pierced on a whim without bothering to let me know. And I remember on one particular day arriving home to see that he had turned a large swath of the field behind our house into a pen for two goats that, for some unknown reason, he purchased on his way back from town. Huge goats. I love animals, but I wasn’t too sure about this idea. One of them was aggressive and tried to head-butt the girls with her hard skull and sharp horns. I missed our beautiful open field. It was one of my favorite things about our property. I liked to look out the window and see that open space. Peaceful and expansive, filled with wild flowers in springtime.

I think the reason I was so bothered by my ex-husband’s behavior was that it made me feel powerless over my own life; like I could have an opinion, but it wasn’t going to change anything, because he would do what he would do whether I liked it or not. It was difficult being a young mom and not feeling like I had a safe, stable male figure around. I was reluctant to ask for help with disciplining the kids because he could be so harsh with his tactics. I’m sure some of our differences were simple male/female aspects in origin. But there was more to it than that.

As the years wore on, I became more and more unhappy. I grew tired of seeing Jason’s erratic behavior in public and exhausted with wondering what type of drugs or alcohol he had over consumed when I found him in an agitated or comatose state. I could only handle so many times of rushing to town to put an emergency class canceled sign on the door of his martial arts dojo before getting sick of covering for his odd behavior and addictions. I felt like I had too many family secrets to keep track of. Too much to hide. While he was busy becoming a black belt in kenpo karate, I was busy becoming a master at compensating for his dysfunctions. And presenting an outward persona like we were the perfect couple and I was a happy wife.

It got to the point where all I had to do was smell a hint of alcohol on his breath and I would feel sick. Full of angry despair. Substances controlled our lives, and I worried about the girls’ safety when they were with their father. How could he respond appropriately if the kids got hurt and needed him when he was in a drunken stupor?

Because of all my years spent with an addict who had emotional health issues, I’m afraid I adopted a rather intolerant view of alcoholism and drug abuse. They say it’s a disease, and I try hard to understand, but when it burns down your whole life as you know it, it becomes harder to see it as a disease, and easier to see it as someone choosing to be uncaring, destructive, and selfish. I was never lonelier than during my years with Jason. My soul became desolate. I tried to stop wanting things from him and in doing so I continually denied my own feelings and emotional needs. This was a dangerous combination, because I found myself having strong attractions to other men. Men who seemed warm, open hearted, and caring. I beat myself up every time this happened, and I told myself it was normal. But it wasn’t normal. Yes, we notice here and there a person attractive to our eye. That is normal. But my intense struggling was a symptom that something was dreadfully wrong in my marriage and in my life.

I resolved to remedy the problem by leaving my marriage at the age of twenty-nine. I met him when I was barely eighteen, gave him almost my entire twenties, and had many regrets I failed to fully understand until that point in time. I didn’t realize what I gave up while trying to be a good girl and stay entrenched in my marital status. I don’t think anyone gets married thinking they will get divorced. Most human beings are well meaning, dedicated to doing the right thing. Women tend to sacrifice their own happiness for the sake of their children and partners. Tragically, we do this often. But I was done sacrificing. It was time for me to stop giving myself the short end of the deal and pretending it was okay. I was ready to make a run for it. I was ready to live.

Chapter 2

AFTERMATH

Like so many women who leave a bad marriage, I didn’t take enough with me. I left almost everything I owned in the house I shared with Jason. Soul-crushing guilt over leaving him burned through me like a fever, but I knew it was the only right thing to do. Clothes and jewelry, a few picture albums, my kids every other week. Those were the belongings I took. Over the years I’ve often thought about an item I liked and wondered where I stored it, only to realize, as if for the first time, that I left it behind in my past life. There are still a few things I look for now and then, because I sincerely don’t know whether I have them in my possession or not. A pretty little vase we had purchased at a Saturday market in Eugene, Oregon. An Olson’s Stoneware serving dish I loved. I assume I left them sitting on the shelf as I drove away from our house for the last time. Never looking back except to make sure my past wasn’t following me too closely.

I didn’t start out my new life as a single mother in any sort of glamourous fashion. Quite the contrary, really. Moving in with my father, I had a tiny but cute little room the girls and I shared. I’ll never forget the deep loneliness during the first week they spent with their dad. Lying down on my futon, I’d try to read a book so my mind would stop focusing on how much I missed my children. My heart ached and I felt like a terrible parent for putting them through such trauma. My daughters were still young. Such cuties. My little peanuts. I felt like a kid myself when separated from them. Realizing how much I was accustomed to their daily noises and chatter. The tiny spare room I was living in, while trying to figure out how to live on my own, felt eerily quiet. Too quiet. As if no life hung in the air. Only empty space and microscopic particles of dust that began to settle on my soul.

It was strange to be single for the first time in my adult life. Equal parts thrilling and terrifying. With an aspect of insecurity thrown into the mix. What the heck would it be like to be thrust into the dating scene? Dating? What was that? I hadn’t really even dated Jason. I mean, we got to know each other at first, but not over meals or drinks at restaurants. Rather, we ran into each other a couple times at gatherings, then started hanging out at his mom’s place. For some reason we just were without the standard lead-up of most relationships.

So here I was, almost thirty years old, only having slept with the father of my children, anticipating my first date someday down the road. And more pressingly, anticipating what the heck I was going to do with my life now that it was my own. How would I support myself? Was I going to live in this little room at my dad’s forever? Was I going to be that adult child he can never seem to push from the nest? I hoped not. I appreciated him taking me under his wing at a time when I needed his help more than ever, but I didn’t want to get too comfortable. I needed to make sure I kept the fire under me burning bright and burning hot. So I would make headway fast and learn to be self-sufficient.

But, becoming self-sufficient proved to be harder than I expected. And it didn’t help that Jason had unilaterally cancelled our joint credit card. I’ve wondered many times why that was legal. Shouldn’t the company have consulted me first? It caused mayhem with my credit for a long time and bills in collections because I had no way to pay medical or dental dues in full.

I lived in that little room at my father’s house for six months. Long enough to find a new job and a home to rent for me and my girls. As luck would have it, that home was located directly across the street from my dad’s. I walked the few things I owned right across the road and into my rental. A large, strange brick building that looked like a fortress. The masonry was drab greyish tan and the inside was like a time capsule from the nineteen-seventies.

Once the girls and I officially settled into our new home, I found it doubly hard when they were away. Those weeklong stints felt like an eternity. All I wanted was to have them home. Looking back now I wish I had pushed for full custody from the start, with visitation rights and maybe weekends with their father. They went through so many unnecessarily harrowing experiences with him during his custodial weeks. Not because he was purposefully harming them, but because his life was turned upside down in so many ways that he could not provide stability. I tried to be amicable and share our kids equally, but the girls were caught in the middle. And they weren’t getting what they needed when they were away from me. Too often they saw him drunk beyond coherency or on manic highs from hard drugs. A lot of the worst stories the girls only shared with me years later, after they were solely in my care. Not as a way to bash their father, but to express the trauma and work through it. I wish I could go back in time and erase what they went through. I hope they know that when they were away from me all those weeks all I could think about was the very second they would walk back through my door with excited smiles on their faces.

The first night I got them back was always a celebration. We had so much to catch up on. So many hugs to stockpile. We loved watching movies and playing ping-pong in the back room. On the table that a girlfriend lent me, when she saw what an oddly big, empty back room I had. We perched at windows, looking at foxes. The sweet creatures loved to eat the fallen cherries from the tree in our yard. Our girl time was invaluable to me. Something we did not have enough of before. I wasn’t such a present mother when I was still unhappily embroiled with their father. Now I was able to be the mom I wanted to be, without having to co-parent with someone I had categorical disagreements with on a daily basis.

Our time together became a precious commodity, not something I took for granted. I was beginning to find my strength and to learn that I had power. The power to create a safe haven for my children, and to let them see me grow up before their eyes. From a despairing wife to a single mother. Learning to be strong. Teaching them to be strong, too.

Chapter 3

HOMESCHOOLED

As I think about my girls’ childhoods, my mind drifts back even farther to my own. Being a little girl myself, running around on the twenty acres of land where I was raised. My parents met in India. My dad was in the Peace Corps in Nepal instead of going to war in Vietnam, and my mom was traveling the world after college, trying to find herself in ashrams. Learning the art of vipassana meditation. Healing what needed healing from her tough childhood.

Mom and Dad had my brother in Nepal before returning to the United States during the mid-seventies. My sister was born in Humboldt County, on the Northern California coast. Then came yours truly, entering the world in a log cabin my parents built with their blood, sweat, tears and bare hands. We didn’t even have electricity or plumbing yet. Those luxuries came years later. I can still remember the day we had a flush toilet put into the house. It was a big deal. I was about five years old and watched the heavy equipment dig the septic tank hole in the backyard. Before this, we had a rustic outhouse. One where you had to check for large spiders or lizards before you sat down to pee. And did I mention I have a severe case of arachnophobia? Yep. I sure do. My upbringing really solidified that fear for me. You couldn’t go an hour in the day without encountering spiders of all types and varying aggressive tendencies. Wasps sometimes entered the house through an open door and dive bombed your head, and alligator lizards, scary creatures looking more like baby alligators than anything else I’d seen, were everywhere. It was the wild west at my place and I wasn’t really the outdoorsy type.

I was homeschooled through my early years. Which was both a blessing and a curse. The isolation and loneliness I endured living in the middle of nowhere, seven miles from the nearest hint of civilization, was pretty intense. But I liked doing my own thing. When I wanted to draw, I drew. When I wanted to read, I read. I certainly had school work for the homeschooling program I was in, but it wasn’t a grueling amount. Just enough to help me not appear to have been brought up by cave people. Enough so that when I did choose to enter the public school system I would not be light-years behind my peers.

I tried going to school half a year in second grade but was not impressed. All the commotion was such a shock to my system that I did not thrive in the environment and my mom pulled me out and resumed home teaching. I didn’t give school another go until the sixth grade. At that time I started attending the school where my father taught music, an hour away from home. The kids were nice. I made friends easily and I was at the perfect age to learn how to infiltrate into society. It went well enough that I stuck with it this time. But I’m thankful for homeschooling. It shaped me and taught me to think outside the box. To this day, I run from conformity. I march to the sound of my own heartbeat and avoid following the crowd. Sometimes people don’t understand me because of that, but that’s okay.

Chapter 4

NAOMI

To know more about who I am, you need to know more about my nuclear family. First, let me introduce you to my sister. She was a New Year’s Day baby; January first, nineteen-seventy-seven. A crazy-adorable kid with chubby cheeks and eyes wide like a fruit bat. Meredith Naomi Walker came into this world with a lot on her mind. As she grew up it was obvious that she was not your everyday American girl. Social justice, feminism, ethical treatment of our environment, were some of many things on her passionate agenda to make this world a better place. She once wrote a letter to Mr. Rogers. He wrote back. They exchanged words as pen pals for six months. They were like-minded individuals. Both good to the core.

But Naomi was not particularly happy. She was rather a tortured soul. Four and a half years older than me, I idolized her to the ends of the earth. As her little sister I wanted to tag along and be her confidant, but she rarely indulged my wants. Most of the time she seemed angry with me, as if I couldn’t do anything right. Throughout her short life, she accomplished adventures such as a year of high school at an international boarding school in India and visiting friends in Bangladesh and South Korea before returning home. She mountain biked across America, worked for Greenpeace on the East Coast, and touched every person she encountered with either extreme charm that induced admiration, or extreme irritation. She had a difficult relationship with men. You might say she was a bit militant in her feminism. Because of her strong female presence, I think most men were threatened by her. Maybe she was just evening the score for all the generations of women threatened by men. Whatever the case, she was a true, beautiful hippie at heart who enjoyed baking banana bread and making unusual herbal salves, arguing with whoever disagreed with her, and adventurous excursions into the wild unknown.

As Naomi grew up and moved out, it was hard to be at home without her. I was dreadfully lonely. Our older brother had flown the coup a couple of years earlier and adjusting to being an only child was hard. Even though my sister and I didn’t get along that well, I was very attached to her, and in my teenage years, it would have been helpful to have her around to talk to. There were so many questions I had for her, but I didn’t get the chance to ask.

One of my favorite memories is visiting her where she lived on the coast. Arcata, California is so lovely. She lived with several roommates in a little house on G Street. I was sixteen or seventeen at the time. My friends and I had gone to the beach for the weekend and they dropped me off for a night so I could catch up with her. At one point we walked to our favorite store called Bubbles. It was full of the most wonderful smelling soaps, lotions and essential oils on the planet. I bought a small vial of vanilla oil. A little dab on the wrist and the scent is intoxicating. I still have a tiny glass vial of it in my purse, and I can’t remember if it’s the same one I got that day or if I replaced it in more recent years. Either way, when I take it out and dab it on, I’m back there with Naomi. Making salads in her kitchen, eating with her on her rooftop underneath the Arcata sky.

During my senior year in high school I